The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘My dear, I’m afraid the O’Briens will have to go, you know?’

  Tasha, once more enjoying her morning in front of the mirror, turned and stared at Jamie.

  ‘I’m sorry? What did you say, Jamie?’

  ‘I said, my dear, I’m afraid the O’Briens will have to go, you know?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Jamie darling, they’ve hardly arrived and we’re all thrilled with her cooking.’

  ‘Mrs O’Brien has a drink problem, as you were warned, Tasha—’

  ‘Most cooks have, darling,’ Tasha told him gaily. ‘I know because Maudie Little always tells me if any of hers ever dropped off the wagon she would just throw a bucket of iced water over them, pour black coffee down them, and that always did the trick!’

  ‘I was going to say that we knew Mrs O’Brien had a drink problem when we took her on but we were willing to risk that since she has such high standards, but it’s not her, my darling, it’s Tom, I’m afraid. Westrup found him in flagrante delicto yesterday, when he was meant to be going for cough linctus for the poor old chap.’

  ‘Tom? You don’t mean it! Tom O’Brien? But – but he’s not old enough to be found whatsit in whatsit.’

  Jamie smiled slightly, and sighed.

  ‘You’re very naïve, darling. I’m afraid most teenage boys are old enough, if willing enough.’

  ‘But Tom is such a good boy, so willing, never given any trouble.’

  Tasha turned away, chewing her lip, upset to a degree that she could not explain.

  ‘Besides, the girls will be so upset if Tom goes, surely we can turn a blind eye to such a lapse? I mean, really. Of course he shouldn’t have succumbed to – to that kind of thing, but even so, he’s only a boy still, just give him a clip round the ear and tell him not to do it again.’

  ‘The girls will get over his leaving. Besides, Westrup’s not been particularly happy with his work lately. He has someone else in his sights already. We won’t be long without a lad, don’t worry, darling.’

  Tasha sat down on the satin quilt that covered her bed.

  ‘Jamie, to my certain knowledge Tom has never put a foot wrong before. Hand on heart, I would have sworn he was the last person to do anything like that. I mean, he’s always been so proper, quite the old man, and you know how the girls both like to tease him, push him too far, and he’s never put a foot wrong.’

  ‘Well, he has now. And so I’m afraid it is curtains for him.’

  ‘Have you told him?’

  ‘Oh yes, and his mother. I’ve paid them up for the month, only fair, really. They’re packing up now, even as we speak.’

  ‘Jamie! You can’t, you can’t possibly sack Mrs O’Brien. She’s the best cook I’ve ever taken on.’

  Tasha stood up, pulling on her chic tweed jacket that owed nothing to a country tailor and everything to a modish London couturier.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I am going to find Mrs O’Brien and tell her to ignore everything. I cannot possibly lose Mrs O’Brien, Jamie. You must be mad. We have a house party of fourteen next Friday, and where am I supposed to be finding a cook before that, may I ask?’

  ‘Best if you leave them be, my dear. Nothing to be gained from going to see them.’

  Jamie tried to block the door to prevent Tasha from leaving.

  ‘No, Jamie, no. After all, I employ Mrs O’Brien. You must allow me to go to her at once. Now please, let me pass, Jamie.’

  Tasha’s tone was so firm that Jamie was forced to step aside, but as he did so he murmured, ‘Don’t be surprised if Tom denies everything, will you? I insist that he has to be dismissed whatever happens to your cook.’

  ‘Silly boy,’ was all Tasha said.

  But for some reason he could not have explained, Jamie was not quite sure whether Tasha was referring to him or Tom O’Brien.

  As it turned out, happily for Jamie Millington, young Tom O’Brien denied nothing. He merely stood white-faced outside their now former home, with his mother and their pathetic-looking luggage, staring past Tasha as she arrived in her new convertible Morris, at the same time as the station taxi was drawing up.

  ‘I’m so sorry about what’s happened, Tom, about your silly mistake. And Mrs O’Brien, I’m sorry that you have to bear the brunt of Tom’s foolishness, really I am, but you can’t leave me now. As you know I have a house party next Friday, how will I ever replace you by then? Besides, it wasn’t you that was caught out, it was Tom here. So, please, you must stay. Please.’

  Tom looked across at his mother. It made sense. He must go. She must stay. At least that way she would have a salary, and a place to live. If he had copped it, well and good, but for her to cop it because of him was stupid.

  ‘She’s right, Ma, you should stay. It’s none of your fault, what’s happened is none of your fault.’

  Tom noted the look of relief on his mother’s face.

  ‘But how will you manage, Tom?’

  ‘I’ll find another dogsbody job, Ma, see if I don’t. I’ve got a month’s wages in my pocket. I’ll find another position in a jiffy. I’ll ring you, soon as I’m settled.’

  He stepped into the station taxi that was now waiting for him, and closed the door firmly after himself. He wound down the window to wave goodbye to her, and as he did so he felt his mother’s hand over his.

  ‘I know you didn’t do what they said, Tom. I know you wouldn’t do such a thing.’

  Tom nodded, solemn-faced.

  ‘No, I didn’t, Ma, but someone has to take the blame for what happened, and I’m afraid it’s me that’s drawn the short straw this time. Doesn’t matter – not really,’ he lied. ‘Face it, it wasn’t much of a job, Ma, mucking out, chopping logs and that, not much of a job if you’re going to be a man to be reckoned with. It’s fine for you, cooking is what you’re good at, Ma, but I would have to move on sometime soon anyway. Now go back to work, and don’t give it another thought, Ma, really.’

  His mother hesitated, and then, seeing the determination in her son’s eyes, she finally gave in, her spectacled face grim.

  ‘Very well, but be sure to let me know where you are, and I’ll send you on some money, until you’re fixed up. Just let me know, promise, Tom?’

  Despite her scrabbling about in her old, worn handbag and handing him some of her precious wages, his mother could not help looking relieved, so much so that Tom could see that she was only too happy to believe what he was saying. Although in their heart of hearts they both knew he was only braving it out, there was no other decision that they could take. For the sake of any future security, he had to be the one to go.

  The taxi moved off down the back drive that led from the small row of tied cottages to the main road, and as they did so Tom watched his mother and Mrs Millington in the driver’s mirror staring after the old cab until it was out of sight, after which he knew Mrs Millington would drive back to the big house leaving his mother to follow on foot carrying in large straw baskets whatever stocks and soups she had been up brewing since dawn. What a stroke of luck that Tasha Millington had been giving a house party the following Friday. If it had not been for that, they both might have been yet again out of a job.

  ‘Can you stop by the main gates, Mr Bosworth? If you wouldn’t mind, that is?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind, Tom. Do anything for you and your mum.’

  Tom looked momentarily surprised at Mr Bosworth’s warm tone, until he remembered that Ma had given the Bosworths, all six of them, Christmas in their cottage, and what a Christmas it had proved to be, despite the fact that they had to celebrate it six days early, on account of Ma being on duty in the kitchens of the main house for the whole of the Christmas holiday. And, what was more, she had made sure that each one of those children had been given a present, not to mention both the grown-ups. But then Ma always did have eyes too big for her wallet when it came to other people.

  The taxi drew to a slow, reverential halt in front of the main gates of Knighton Hall and, as it
did so, Tom climbed out of the passenger seat and went up to the vast black intricately wrought-iron gates with their large old-fashioned pillars supporting two sleek lead greyhounds.

  ‘Listen to me, Knighton Hall, and listen well, because one day I am going to come back and I’m going to buy you!’ he whispered to the old house that he could not quite see, but whose façade he knew so well. ‘And one day it is going to be you who will be packing your bags, Mr Millington, sir, and me who will be unpacking mine, because I’m never going to forget what you did to me and Ma today, not ever.’

  ‘Saying goodbye to the old place, were you, Tom?’

  Tom stared for a few seconds longer out of the back window of the car as the elegant entrance started to grow smaller and smaller.

  ‘Not goodbye, Mr Bosworth, more …’ He sat forward once again. ‘More, well …’ He coolly considered the point for a few more seconds. ‘More what you might call, “See you again soon.” ’

  Mr Bosworth now glanced at young Tom’s thin, anxious young face, taking his eyes momentarily from the narrow country road, because there was something in the young man’s tone, some look to his eyes, and to the set of his mouth, which made him stare at him in surprise. He sensed that from today – whether Tom himself knew it or not – young Tom was not going to be someone that anyone would want to cross.

  New Brooms

  The reason she had finally been allowed to go off and visit her Millington relatives at Knighton Hall soon became very clear to Alexandra. It was evident in the fact that her father went off whistling after eating his usual hearty breakfast, it was evident in her grandmother’s uneasy smile every time the telephone rang and a husky female voice asked to speak to John, it was evident in the fact that Janet Priddy kept telephoning and her grandmother would carefully close the sitting-room door so that no one could overhear her conversation.

  Her father had what everyone on the farm called a ‘lady friend’.

  ‘More like a lady fiend,’ Betty grumbled when she thought Alexandra was not listening. ‘All red nails and tight skirts, lipstick and cinched waist, not at all suitable. He met her at some wedding or another.’

  Tea every Sunday became a ritual torture as John Stamford insisted on asking Kay Cullen to join in what was usually only an occasion for close friends and farming neighbours.

  ‘More tea, Miss Cullen?’

  ‘Oh thank you so much, Mrs Stamford. So delicious. Really lovely. So refreshing. How do you manage it?’

  From the first Sunday tea at Lower Bridge Farm that her father’s new love interest attended, Alexandra became acutely aware of the fact that Miss Cullen was overdoing it, and that her compliments about her cup of quite ordinary Indian tea, or the lightness of the scones, or the deliciously different Victoria sponge, were only earning looks of spite from the other teatime visitors to Lower Bridge Farm.

  ‘I seem to remember that they grow their own tea here, in the greenhouse, at least that’s what I heard.’

  Janet Priddy looked around the room, careful to keep her face straight, although her tone was mocking. Her statement was greeted with half-smiles and sly looks as the assembled company took in Kay Cullen’s high-heeled shoes and the long red talons that were reaching out with feigned gratitude for a sardine sandwich to go with her cup of tea.

  ‘Poor John’s taste has always been for London girls, it seems,’ Janet said later to her husband, as they were driving home. ‘Why he can’t find someone in his own neck of the woods, the Lord, and the Lord alone, knows. There are enough good country girls in the villages around for him to choose from, but no, he had to go for a swimwear model, or whatever she is meant to have been.’

  ‘Knitwear, John told me, knitwear. Quite respectable.’

  ‘Nothing respectable about modelling, Mr Priddy, and you know it. And if you think there is, then you should be taken away in a plain van, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘You’re not fixed on this one for a wife, are you?’ his mother finally heard herself asking John.

  ‘Let us put it this way, I have proposed to Kay, and she has accepted me, Mother. I am a very lucky man, and I think you should agree with that.’

  John looked round to see his poor mother looking as if he had just shot her through the heart.

  ‘Never say so, John, never say that’s true.’

  ‘It is, Mother, and since this is my house, and mine alone, she will, once we are married, be coming to live here with us.’

  There was a long silence. Finally his mother turned her chignoned head and, staring across the room at the boy she had once loved more than life itself, she breathed in and out deeply before making her announcement.

  ‘In that case, if Miss Cullen will be definitely moving in, I will be definitely moving out, John.’

  Another silence followed this, and if Betty Stamford had hoped that her statement would bring about a change of heart she was mistaken.

  ‘So be it, Mother, so be it. If you can’t live here any more, in all conscience, then so be it. As you know I have long prayed for a replacement for my Laura, taken so soon after our marriage, and now I have found Kay nothing will induce me to do anything except marry her, and thanks be, she accepted my proposal only last night after I had walked her back to her cottage—’

  ‘Her cottage? Your cottage you mean, but now you’ve put her into it, heavens only knows what else will follow.’

  ‘What else is that next week, Mother, we are to go to Chapeltown to buy the ring.’

  ‘Going to Chapeltown to buy a ring?’ His mother’s voice at once rose in indignation. ‘They’ll scalp you for every penny you have in Chapeltown they will, really they will. Besides, what is wrong with my old engagement ring, may I ask?’

  ‘I put it back in your box, Mother, many years ago. Let’s face it, I don’t wish to be hurtful, but as Kay said, it brought my Laura nothing except bad luck. That’s why I’m taking Kay to Chapeltown. And—’

  His mother quickly interrupted him, at the same time leaving the room in as dignified a manner as was possible for someone who knew her heart was breaking.

  ‘I will be moving out of here as soon as I find somewhere else, John. And taking Alexandra with me,’ she told him, the finality in her tone surprising even herself.

  John did look momentarily taken aback by this news before, after some time spent in thought, nodding his head slowly in agreement at his mother’s proposed plan.

  ‘Well, now I come to consider it, it probably will be best. Now that she’s older, it probably would be best if you take Alexandra with you. I mean I don’t suppose my Kay will want a step-daughter hanging around the place. Besides, she can always come back here on a visit – Sunday tea, that sort of thing – Alexandra can come back here on a visit, any time.’

  But Betty was gone long before John could have time to consider the real implications of losing his daughter from his house, or perhaps even from his life.

  To give her some credit, Kay Cullen did her best to try to make up to her future stepdaughter for the loss of her home and status.

  ‘Would you like to be a bridesmaid at our wedding, Alex dear?’ she cooed.

  Alexandra stared at her.

  ‘I don’t think my gran-gran-grandmother will allow it,’ she stated finally, with complete truth. ‘Be-be-besides, we are moving out so soon, it will make it a bit awkward, wer-wer-won’t it? Spe-spe-specially since my grandmother is not coming to the wedding.’

  Her hesitation was back with such a vengeance that Alexandra could see by the way Kay Cullen’s foot was moving up and down in irritation that it was all she could do to stop herself from finishing Alexandra’s sentences for her.

  ‘You don’t have to be ruled by your grandmother, you know.’ Kay stared at herself in the mirror in front of which she was now seated slowly brushing her hair, and as she did so it occurred to Alexandra just how many hours women seemed to spend in front of looking glasses staring at themselves, before finally leaving them looking much as they had before.
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  ‘I know your father wants you to be at our wedding,’ Kay went on, now applying a light powdering to her already pale face.

  It was difficult for Alexandra, steeped as she was in family politics, to make the right decision without offending just about everyone. Her grandmother’s insistence that she herself would not be attending the wedding was ranged up against Alexandra’s own loyalty to her father. On the other hand, she was too honest not to know that if left to herself she would really rather be helping out at Mrs Chisholm’s stables, polishing Cherrypan’s tack, grooming one of the many hirelings that were kept for hunting, rather than watch her father being married to Kay Cullen.

  It was not jealousy, because she could not remember her own mother – not even the photograph that she kept of her by her bedside seemed to stir her emotions as much as she knew it should – but on the other hand, remote though her father might seem on occasion, he had always been very kind to her, never uttering so much as an impatient phrase, always at pains to seem pleasant and caring, while silently suffering; so much so that it sometimes seemed to Alexandra that she could actually see him bleeding inwardly, sighing heavily in sorrow at the loneliness of his widower’s lot, emotionally unable to move back into the past, or forward into the future.

  ‘Of course I-I will come to your wedding,’ Alexandra heard herself saying, although not quite believing. ‘But I-I think I am—’ She stopped for a second. ‘I-I think I am a bit old to-to be a bridesmaid now, and I-I would look a bit funny. My grandmother thinks I am a – bit too old,’ she confided in a rush.